July 2007

July 31 2007

I just can't seem to get enough of this mystery novel they call the quest for Microsoft Open XML to attempt becoming an industry standard. It's almost like playing a game of corporate whack-a-mole. Every time the truth seems to get out, another spin pops up. That just happened in the ongoing atte...

July 30 2007

A day of customer meetings in Cleveland served as a strong reminder of the perils of the corporate firewall. Having worked for the same company, in the same home office setup, for the last seven years, sometimes I forget that Internet access is different from corporate offices. Today I experienced...

July 29 2007

I'm now running the July 23rd pre-release build of Lotus Notes 8. This build is the last one we're making available to managed beta customers and design partners. From here on in, the daily builds are ready for production, should the quality and other metrics be met. I am genuinely impressed at...

July 29 2007

July 27 2007

The Notes and Domino catalog on ibm.com has been updated with listings for 20 partners who have built or updated their Notes/Domino applications for ND8 -- a total of 36 solutions so far. This is the first time (at least in a long time) that IBM has been able to announce applications ready for a ne...

July 26 2007

I want to thank Stephen McGibbon for finding an error in the recently published white paper on the Notes 8 productivity editors. Microsoft's Stephen McGibbon claimed on his blog that the default formats were not ODF, based on the whitepaper. The whitepaper had a table that was based on a prior vers...

July 25 2007

So this topic is a bit self-centered, let's just get that out of the way upfront. As I mentioned a few days ago, we're starting to plan for Lotusphere 2008. One of the threads passing through my brain is, "what should I speak about at LS08?" And while I have a few ideas, I am struggling for somet...

July 24 2007

On a divisional call this morning, Lotus GM Mike Rhodin indicated that he will announce the final ship date for Lotus Notes and Domino 8 next week at the Lotus Day events in Japan. Yes, it will be in August... Oops, left out this thought from the original posting. During the call, Rhodin specific...

July 23 2007

There's one topic left from my Japan trip a few weeks ago, and the fact that I haven't been able to get around to writing about it is somewhat ironic. One of the topics that came up in almost every meeting I had in Japan was Notes/Domino upgrades, and the rate and pace of upgrades. I've known for...

July 23 2007

OK, I'm going off-topic for a short rant...next post will be Lotus-related... I've written about the Chicago commuter rail system, Metra, a time or two before on the blog. I have fond, nostalgic memories of taking the train downtown during childhood years, and back in the mid-90s when it was the...

July 19 2007

An article appeared this morning in Heise (auf Deutsch) (in English) abou a password exposure in Lotus Notes. IBM has published a technote (1266085) today, addressing the possibility described in the article. As you'll see in the technote, this issue is classified as low risk, as it requires acce...

July 18 2007

The July 16 pre-release candidate of Notes/Domino 8 is in the hands of beta testers and design partners tonight, as the march towards release continues. Mary Beth Raven commented last week about our role in the release "jury", voting on readiness of each candidate build. I know part of what I'll b...

July 17 2007

Niklas and team are authoring a blog about composite applications on IBM developerworks, and today's posting is a great overview of the technical benefit of the Notes 8 composite applications model:I think that composite applications have the potential to significantly change the way customers, ISVs...

July 17 2007

IBM Training has announced the first face-to-face Notes/Domino 8 classes, starting in August: Building the IBM Lotus Domino 8 Infrastructure (click this link for Australia, Germany, Italy, and New Zealand) Exploring New Features in IBM Lotus Domino 8 Administration (click this link for Australia,...

July 17 2007

Five months into using the Blackberry Pearl, I suppose the most remarkable thing is how little I've written about it. It just works, and works well (99% of the time). I haven't become an addict, though it does seem odd that first thing in the morning, I scan my mail on the Pearl rather than walk d...

July 16 2007

A new 12-page overview paper covers the basics of the productivity tools included in Lotus Notes 8. The primary objective of this paper is to establish a basic understanding of capabilities of the editors...it is not (and won't be) a feature-for-feature comparison. Use this paper to help your orga...

July 15 2007

Lotus community bloggers Tom Duff and Gregg Eldred have gotten together and started a blog on a topic that is at the core of what the community stands for -- the notion of helping to promote the product by which we all make our living. Check it out at www.lotusviralmarketing.com. From their kickof...

July 12 2007

A new four-page brochure on Notes 8 is now available for download...will be added to the Notes 8 pages in the next couple of days. Help your executives understand the new release... There's also a short two-page flyer available-- Notes/Domino 8 in 8x11 format and in A4 format. Good stuff......

July 12 2007

Bruce kicked off a good discussion yesterday on the ISV market for Notes/Domino:Now if we turn our attention to "applications" such as help desk, ISO compliance, CRM etc. how many companies are purchasing these types of applications from ISV's? It seems from the discussions I have been having with m...

July 12 2007

Yesterday, IBM announced unfettered access to any intellectual property relevant to over 150 software interoperability standards...he move, which IBM believes is the largest of its kind, is also designed to spur industry innovation, while discouraging litigation. The software specifications and pro...

July 11 2007

Computerworld covers the Microsoft partner conference:Turner credited business partners for helping Microsoft's Exchange e-mail server to attract more than 2.5 million e-mail users that were formerly on IBM's Lotus Notes software. Over the past two years, Microsoft has released a series of tools for...

July 11 2007

On my third day back in the US, I'm still working on several follow-up actions from last week's meetings in Japan. I think part of the reason re-entry was a bit difficult this time was the sheer rate and pace of the trip, similar to last year's visit to Australia/New Zealand. Among the many nice...

July 9 2007

(About 50 updates in my Japan set on Flickr) What a great event! I spent more than three hours with this group...two hours in formal presentation and Q&A, and another hour while community members did demonstrations of everything from Notes V1 (yes, really) to some great Notes 8 composite appl...

July 8 2007

As the jet lag clears, I'll have a few more important catch-up thoughts from Japan. For now, this entry on Michael Sampson's weblog seems worth some attention:On Thursday I met with Mark Bennett, the IT Manager for the New Zealand offices of a global organization. What's interesting about Mark is t...

July 6 2007

This morning, I stopped in for coffee at a local coffee chain called Zoka. They claim to have Seattle USA roots, but I couldn't find any evidence of it. Anyway, I had a moment of confusion as I sat drinking my coffee. The soundtrack during the ~10 minutes I was in the store: Rihanna, Umbrella...

July 6 2007

July 5 2007

I had a fantastic time yesterday in Osaka and Nagoya, though I was thoroughly exhausted at the end of the day. Much of what took place yesterday encapsulates what I love about working with and in the Japanese market, and being here in general. Yesterday evening, I participated in a roundtable eve...

July 5 2007

Looks like Microsoft has openly declared war on RIM/Blackberry...Of course there's more to an Enterprise Mobile Solutions discussion than just TCO, but in many discussions TCO is an important driver. I do question by the way how many companies actually still make the business case for mobile email...

July 5 2007

Among the zillions of brands of bottled water in the US, one of the more popular ones is Crystal Geyser. This one has always sturuck me as a little odd, because it has a byline on the bottle -- "by CG Roxane". Don't really know who Roxane is, but anyway. Here in Nagoya yesterday, I bought a bottl...

July 3 2007

The Lotus Japan team has built quite an impressive agenda for the four days I'm in the country. Several customer meetings, partner roundtables, community/user group events, internal planning, and a meeting with the Japanese Notes Consortium. Today I met with Suzuki-san from the Notes Consortium to...

July 3 2007

My travel reading this week is Devil in the White City, a non-fiction page-turner about the 1893 Chicago World's Fair and a murderer in its midst. But as I have traveled around Tokyo in the last 18 hours, I feel more like "white devil in the city"... not in any derogatory way, but in that there are...

July 2 2007

It is darn near impossible to get used to the absent feeling of not having a cell phone this week. Forget the Blackberry for a second, just not being able to say "call me" or "send me a text" feels unbelievably weird. I know I could rent a phone and that there's some way I could even use my own...